I completed the 2014 italki New Year’s Language Challenge!

We wanted to thank everyone who participated in the 2014 italki New Year’s Language Challenge. Our Marketing and Customer Experience Manager, Lexie finished the challenge and posted her Challenge Video Review. We asked other winners of the Language Challenge to share their final Challenge experiences by video as well and received a lot. Here are the top 5 videos that we received!

The was by far one of the most creative and entertaining videos we received as Lindsay (who is also an avid language learning enthusiast and blogger) really conquers learning German in just 6 short weeks!

LindsayDoesLanguages’ BEFORE the Language Challenge VideoLindsay actually posted a Public Video Pledge when she began the Challenge.

LindsayDoesLanguages’ AFTER the Language Challenge Video

Lindsay also blogs about her experiences with the Language Challenge on her own blog. Read it here. We just wanted to share this little exerpt from her:

“I definitely feel more confident speaking German and other than the odd case issue or separable verb stumbling me, I think I’m alright. Although I still make mistakes (most of which I noticed post-production and kicked myself for!) it’s still a level I’m proud of and a nice solid base to begin to move on to my next personal language challenge…a little bit of Dutch!”

John is learning Portuguese because he is going to the World Cup in Brazil! He pretty much started with ZERO Portuguese ability. You be the judge of whether he improved or not. His improvement is absolutely amazing and inspiring!

John’s BEFORE the Language Challenge VideoJohn also posted a Public Video Pledge before he began the Challenge.

John’s AFTER the Language Challenge Video

John pretty much speaks entirely in Portuguese for nearly 5 minutes straight. The difference is like night and day. He also throws in some Japanese at the end of the video as well!

Tomfrom San Francisco20 Lessons in 6 weeks Learning Norwegian, French and ChineseCOMPLETED!

Tom is a polyglot and just kicks ass learning languages. In the Language Challenge he took on 3 different languages!

Tom’s BEFORE the Language Challenge VideoTom was another one of our Challengers who posted a Public Video Pledge before the start of the Challenge.

Tom’s AFTER the Language Challenge Video

In the end, Tom’s Norwegian really improved considerably. Just for yourself! We were impressed that he was also able to squeeze French and Mandarin as well!

Erica shares her experiences with the Challenge. She didn’t have a before video but her video about her experiences with the Challenge are great – especially since she speaks entirely in English for the entire video!

We hope that the experiences of our Language Challenge winners will inspire and motivate you to learn a language now. They did it… so can you!

Were there more than five before and after videos? I want to see one by someone who studied Japanese. Maybe I’ll have to make one next year

Shaun Somers

All I want to know is – what is the ‘official’ way to pronounce “italki” ?
Is it “eye-talk-eye” or “eye-talk-ee”?? My default would be the latter, but a lot of native english speakers seem to say it the first way.

Brad Stokes

I pronounce it Eye-Talk-ee in English, but in Spanish it comes out as ee-tal-kee. At least it has with every tutor I’ve had thus far.